Why Philosophy Matters

People talk about philosophy in terms of “or.” Philosophy or faith. Philosophy or literature. Philosophy or science, as if the mind were incapable of doing both and reaching its own conclusions.

But that position is ahistorical—great thinkers have long worked across disciplines—and counterproductive: you can glean profound insights from philosophy without emptying it of artistic value, without betraying scientific principles, without sacrificing your faith.

Whatever your worldview, philosophy matters.

Here’s why:

1. Philosophy helps you engage your culture

If you’re a pastor, understanding the culture helps you identify and address your congregation’s weaknesses, doubts, and blind spots. If you’re a student, it helps you think clearly about who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going. If you’re a parent, it helps you answer your child’s questions about the world.

(If you disagree with my arguments here, why? Have you found an unquestioned assumption, a circular argument, an inadequate proof? If so, you’re doing philosophy’s rhetorical work—and isn’t that a critical skill worth strengthening?)

3. You can cherry-pick the good

Some of the West’s most creative thinkers combined insights from disparate disciplines. Their genius wasn’t raw innovation; it was the creativity to pick out elements of disparate worldviews and combine them into something new. You can do the same—you can pick out philosophy’s useful elements without accepting the whole thing.

Not a postmodernist? You can still find insights into language in the twentieth-century “linguistic turn,” which studied how words’ forms (signifiers) and senses (signifieds) interact to create meaning.

Disagree with Kant’s conclusion that things in themselves are unknowable? You can still incorporate his categorization of knowledge as either sensible (five red balloons) or conceptual (fiveness, redness).

Not an existentialist? You can still appreciate Kierkegaard’s nuanced readings of Abraham, Job, and infinite faith.

4. When you know the old claims, you know the counterarguments

Since most of today’s ideas aren’t new, neither are most of the interesting counterarguments. When you know intellectual history, you know time-tested answers—in advance.

Are you arguing with someone who doesn’t trust our sensory perceptions of the world—who thinks we might all be dreaming, or brains in a vat? Berkeley and Hume advanced similar arguments; Thomas Reid has already responded that common-sense belief in the world is the basis for any meaningful philosophy.

Defending moral absolutes against a relativist? Turn to the arguments of Socrates and Plato, who’ve already developed arguments for morality built on the notion of absolute truth.

5. Philosophy helps you understand your faith

Christian theology didn’t develop in a vacuum—Paul found philosophy worth engaging, after all. From then on, philosophy and theology developed side by side, but deeply intertwined. Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kierkegaard—many of philosophy’s greatest thinkers were Christian, and many of philosophy’s greatest works address issues relevant to Christians (God, morality, origins). And philosophy is just as useful when it’s not Christian: it’s the context against which theological thought defined itself, so when you know the one, you better understand the other.

Even within deist thought, orthodox positions developed against a backdrop of unorthodox alternatives. As you study Western intellectual history, you’ll come across some nonbiblical but fascinating notions of the divine:

There’s Eriugena’s God, who “does not know . . . what He is because He is not a ‘what,’ being . . . incomprehensible both to Himself and to every intellect.”

There’s Spinoza’s infinite God, roughly synonymous with the whole universe, of which thought, matter, and even human souls are all attributes.

Such alternative accounts are the negative space: the context against which, over time, modern theology established itself. To understand them is, in turn, to more fully understand the orthodox.

6. Philosophy matters because its questions matter

The value of philosophy isn’t just in its answers—it’s in the questions it asks. Though religion and philosophy disagree on much, they’re concerned with similar questions.

How should we live?

What are good deeds?

What can we know, and how?

If you’re thinking about these questions, you’re doing the work of philosophy. You may reach conclusions vastly different from those of Plato or Kant, but you’re still interested in the same things. That alone makes philosophy worth studying.

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For centuries, thinkers have turned to the West’s philosophical canon for time-tested wisdom, fascinating questions, and sheer intellectual pleasure. Now, with Noet, you’ll be able to study these works in the most useful format they’ve ever appeared in.

Noet’s Classical Foundations Bundle (124 volumes, plus the Perseus Classics) sets you up with the core texts of the Western tradition:Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, andKant, as well as Homer, Dante, Milton, Dostoyevsky, and far, far more. With Logos’ original-language tagging and smart searches, you’ll be ready to grasp Greek and Latin nuance and find just what you’re looking for.

Comments

Hi Cliff. I follow your concern. But Col. 2:8 is about not being taken captive by philosophy according to human traditions. Being captivated by the philosophy according to Christ is quite another thing, which Paul, as I would argue was its primary defender. Therefore, you ought avoid only the former Cliff, not the latter.

When I study philosophy according to human tradition I do so so as to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”( 2 Cor. 10:6)

The authors -I think- do not understand what important and what not in philosophy. Missing St.Thomas Acquinas (and Avicenna) when to speak on God! A must of the 20th century mathematical logic like Frege, Russell, A.Tarski (on truth), K.Godel (on proof), A.Turing in order to understand: "proof", "truth"! The fancies of Kant or Descartes are shown by Jan Lukasiewicz. DArkness governs the present discussions in the philosophy of science and theology

Thanks for your comments. We currently have Wittgenstein's Tractatus available on pre-pub. We're also working to increase our offerings in modern philosophy as part of Noet, so be sure to keep on the lookout for additional philosophy resources.